Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates Speaks Out
neoform writes "The Seattle PI is running an interesting interview with Bill Gates." In the article Gates comments on Vista, Google, and a few other pertinent topics. In an amusing bit of related news, an anonymous reader let us know that CNET is also running an interview with Gates. In the CNET interview Gates gives a very interesting response to one of the interview questions. "CNET: So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that."
"Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that."
From context he's probably not referring to "Don't be evil" -- but seriously, who can turn down a sound bite (sound byte?) like that?
Microsoft has to learn how to accept competition and not try to kill it or buy it out. Competition leads to innovation, which is exactly what this industry lacks in a lot of areas.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
(Google has) this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
The slashdot blurb wants to you to think that gates is disagreeing with the do no evil slogan. Silly decepticons running slashdot.
TFA article offers no technology information, has slashdot beocme the borg gazette now?
Come on, why was not posted if not to troll?
Why UNIX?
With the latest pre releases of betas, including 64 beta, and trying not to be evil, etc., gates is going after the one market he never had, computer geeks. We all like linux. We hate evil giant copy-right suing corperations. He's trying to change his ways, and wether it works or not, it will help there PR, CS, and will let us try out and see new products to make us happy. I am all for it. Go bill! Join the force! Leave the dark side!
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
Nothing like taking a reply to one question completely out of context... So Google is not offering development capabilities yet. Of course, I expect they will. But they're not in that game at all today. In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. It's a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer. So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that. He was not referring to the "Do no Evil"
In other Words, Bill Gates, be afraid, be very afraid.
Black Sky
2D Elite Inspired Game
What can one say to something so far off the mark?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
" Friends, in the Clintonian tradition of getting the bad news out first before your enemies do, I have something truly sordid to admit to all of you.
My hope is that you won't lose all respect for me, though I will understand if you think less of me after I reveal this.
It's funny, it all seemed so innocent and fun back in those heady days of youth, but knowing what I know now, it is painful to even think of the depths to which I sunk. It's not even like I can say that I started off on the wrong foot but so many others were doing it that, eventually, I succumbed to temptation. Worse, even to this day, I am still forced to do things I'm too embarrassed to admit--all because of youthful indiscretion.
To show that I didn't start off wrong, I will say that the first computer I owned was an Apple IIe. I moved on to various Mac incarnations and processor families, but eventually . . .
I programmed in VB. A lot. Too much. I try to tell myself that the C classes as an undergrad kept it from turning my brain into complete mush--I even railed at the memory footprint and consciously tried to write code that wouldn't be Atul-like, but I'm certain that the years have had a deletorious effect.
I'll hang my head in shame and perhaps even stay away for a bit, but I thought it would be better if you heard from me instead of the someone on the other side.
May as well get it all out, xxx-xxxx wrote in message xxxxxx:
>
Any who know how to use our secret weapon already may be aware of this because I've revealed it before, but my undergrad and grad degrees are in English.
I don't expect anyone to agree with the ugly choices I made in my youth, but I hope you understand that I am trying to atone--and the VB I'm forced to touch now is only occasional and I no longer take joy in it. "
(kudos to heimdal31 for the original)
C|N>K
"I'm Feelin Lucky"
They were so cocky about it, they even put it on a button...those bastard!!
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
We'll match what they do
Ha! I knew it! This whole time we were right about Microsoft's plan! Their only goal is to copy! (or buy, whichever is more economical)
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
According to an inside source ("The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management" by David Thielen), Microsoft's motto actually is "Total World Domination".
I mean Bill Gates will always rail reactionary against anything he sees as a threat to his business model. I think the real question is why do we care what he has to say in the first place, he may be a savvy businessman but his days as a heady proponent of technology has long been overshadowed by his more nefarious practices.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
And despite what a lot of people will think on the surface (whoa look at how cool Microsoft has made Office 12), it is really Apple, Linux and the Open Source competition that has made Microsoft get its ass in gear.
How else do you explain the sudden amount of creativity and motivation that Microsoft is having with its interface?
Microsoft and the Windows folks are going to act all high and mighty that their OS now has these cool features, but they will not realize what is driving it. Competition.
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together." -bill g.
MABASPLOOM!
So, and I'm not trying to be a smartass, the same guys whose flagship product can't empty a recycle bin without seizing, are trying to be leaders in speech and video recognition?
Clippy AV: "Hello User/Bear/Shrub, I see you've brought a Hammer/Salmon/Exhaust Manifold. Would you like me to assist you with it?
[No] [Cancel]
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Better news would have been the 'face off' with Napoleon Dynamite.
Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not. As we use the Internet to connect everyone up, then the need to essentially have suspicion and only listen to certain other systems, and if flaws come up to have those updated very quickly, that became a new requirement.
Of course software was set up for networked communication. Most UNIX (including *BSD and Linux) systems since the late 1970s have been network-aware in some form or another. And they have experienced nowhere near the problems that Microsoft's software has.
Now it's intriguing that he's suggesting that it might be necessary to "only listen to certain other systems". That sounds an awful lot like a DRM-style situation for the Internet. Imagine not being able to connect to an FTP server running on Windows, only because you're using Mozilla or the FreeBSD ftp client, and such non-Microsoft products are deemed "insecure".
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not."
So, what was IBM's SNA (Systems Network Architecture)? Chopped liver?
That's right up there with "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
He meant to say as Office gor Bloated and I got Richer...
slashdot is becoming more like a cheap tabloid everyday - making up sensational headlines from sentences in articles used out of context to sell their news to the readers. whatever happened to fair, unbiased news for the nerds? are the editors listening?
because Bill Gates is a lying sack of shit, we need to know what he's saying so that we can counter his lies when they are brought up in conversation.
Since we are talking about slogans, I know what Google is against. I want to know what they are for? Do not be evil sounds nice and all, but I know they have some very tilted leanings [that may seem evil to some people] and a heck of a lot of information. But, saying what you are against is not inspirational. Saying what you are for, that inspires people.
In Summary:
Google slogan: "Do no evil".
Microsoft slogan: "Resistance is Futile".
"The remainder of the exercise is left to the readers."
Sorry that you went to all that trouble. Looks like Slashdot and its famous misleading summaries has punked several hapless readers yet again. The summary was written to imply that he was referring to the "do no evil" slogan and you and a few others fell for it.
If you have a moment, read the article and you'll see that Bill references the actual slogan earlier in the interview.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Presumably by "readers", you don't mean in the sense of R's of TFA, unless you're leaving it to them to realize that the "slogan: in question has nothing to do with evil.
Anyhoo, regarding the new Office interface: I hadn't heard of this, but the first screenshots I eviled, errr, Googled look a lot like the deafault GNOME taskbar. I suppose that's a tribute to GNOME, but I personally find that UI utterly frustrating and counterproductive.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Proof that Billy is evil!
DYWYPI?
OK, we all know Gates is the biggest douchebag in Silicon Valley, but who would win in a fight: Larry Paige & Sergey Brin vs. Gates & Ballmer?
I'm fairly certain Paige would thoroughly pound Gates into the floor; but Ballmer is really freakin' scary. That one I'm not so sure of. I'm picturing Ballmer being able to take out both Paige and Brin at the same time.
Then again, Ballmer having Gates as a tag team partner would actually be a hinderence, so I'm thinking Paige and Brin would just barely be able to People's Elbow his ass into submission.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
"(Google has) this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information."
--------- I have no signature
Mod this down. It's not interesting, and it's actually incorrect. As many previous comments have pointed out, he (Bill) is explicitly not talking about the "no evil" slogan, much as much of the slashdot audience would love to hear him say that, just for the fun of it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.
char* slogan = "Don't Be Evil";
char* corporateSlogan;
if(corporateID == GOOGLE)
corporateSlogan = slogan;
else if(corporateID == MICROSOFT)
corporateSlogan = &(slogan[6]);
We're not being prevented from including features, and that's the strength of the settlement that we reached with the Justice Department and others. There's quite a bit of process we go through to make sure that the way we're putting them in and exposing them to third parties, that we're meeting all the requirements of that. But it's not preventing us from being very, very innovative and making it as rich as we want to.
s/it/us
Why stick up for big business?
From Google's corporate info page
Google's breakthrough technology and continued innovation serve the company's mission of "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful."
Wrong slogan. RTFA.
Anyone have a link to the Bill Gates/Napoleon Dynamite video? Looks like MS blanked that part of their web cast out...
It's not their primary "Do no harm" slogan, people...
coding is life
I know most readers doesn't read the fine articles. In this case - make an exception. I think Bill does a fine job at answering the questions. And - he apparently also has a fine sense of humor:
"Google, because they are in the honeymoon phase, people think that they do all things at all times in all ways."
Mr Gates, you're wrong. The internet is the very tool that enables distributed development. Networking (in both the technical and social senses) is at the core of Linux development.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
(Our slogan is that) we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
Yeah, right. My guess is that it would be more like:
"we are going to sell or rent people tools and tell them how and when and for how long and under what restrictions the may organize some information."
If the next three people under you don't write code but they do deals, what do you get?
Anyone know the pecking order at Microsoft? It seems to me that the next three down from Billy or Balmer might be involved in Advertising and FUD....
The first company meeting where I talked about software as a service was in 1998. The relationship with our customers has changed from software in a box to something else.
Totally tempted to say something along the lines of, "Frustration in a box?" I wouldn't ever though. What it really seems like is that the move to services is driven by a need to sell more stuff rather than actual customer demand... Maybe not true on the Business end, but home users definitely seem to want something that just works right out of the box... Services might accomplish this, but one might question their necessity.... And if you sell 10 million boxes of software that come with unnecessary services people end up paying for in some way or another, well, doesn't that imply you're able to manipulate the market somehow?
My little site.
So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?
As other posters have clarified, Gates was probably not talking about the "Don't be evil" slogon. However, that was not immediately obvious from TFA.Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.
Bradley Holt
Bill Gates and his legions of lie-spouting filthmongers deserve the financial grave they're digging for themselves.
Bill should take his ravishing (ahem) wife and go off and do good deeds (as he does, all of my insanity aside) and cure the diseases of the world rather than **RANT BEGINS AGAIN**
fucking the world again and again through the manipulation and domination of the world's computer systems. THAT m'friend is power and Bill Gates is an all too willing handmaiden to the Bushie impulse in the United States. Lying arrogant bastards all of them. Clawing their way to power and woe be he to tries to moderate their lust of the blood of their customers or their citizens.
I'm so frickin' angry I could SPIT!
I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a Slashdotter and they say we are looting, you see a farker and they say they are looking for food. And, you know, its been five days because most of the people ARE Slashdotters. And even for me to complain, I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right to see what is the biggest amount I can give. And just to imagine, if I was down there and those are my people down there. If there is anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help about the way America is set up the help the poor, the Slashdotters, the less well off as slow as possible. Red cross is doing as much as they can. We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way. And now they've given them permission to go down and shoot us.
Not one afraid to admit my mistake, I got punked... I did read the article, but out of order, and let myself believe the reference was to the "Do No Evil".
It was not. Withdrawn.
"There are some zealots that think there should be no software jobs, that we should all, like, cut hair during the day and write code at night."
Either he just doesn't get it, or he's refusing to acknowledge what open source software (and the GPL) really is. Software development *is* services... It's professional services. Work you get paid for. Work you pay someone else to do. Open source spurs innovation because it both allows you to stand on someone elses shoulders and forces you to make your shoulders available to someone else.
That OSS developers cut hair for a living to support their "habit" is ridiculous. Would you let a slashdot member cut *your* hair?
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
So then... Bill's motto is something like:
"Rip off their heads, shit down their necks and then install XP up their butts?"
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I know most people here have an allergy to corporatey stuff, but a mission statement is different from a slogan. Here's M$'s mission statement:
Our Mission
At Microsoft, we work to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. This is our mission. Everything we do reflects this mission and the values that make it possible.
I'm not so sure what their slogan is: You will be assimilated?
In any case, it's clear that the only thing most of us thought as a slogan for google was Do no eviiil. The bit about organizing the world's information and making it useful- well, that's their mission statment.
With a CEO that throws chairs around and a tech with both-feet in mouth disease, I'd be selling M$ shares right now.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Gates: Well, there's a ton of security capability that we are building in to Windows Vista. The whole thing about spyware, malware, phishing, a lot of things that support antivirus. The actual capability of getting updated signatures, that's something you need on an ongoing basis, so you need to ship that separately from the operating system itself and so we will have a way that people sign up from that separate from the operating system.
Oh look, Windows is not putting anti-virus/spyare protection into their operating system. Thats not too much of a suprise. MS can make more money selling their applications seperately. But the sad thing is that he tries to stray from the real reason once again. Oh you "NEED" to ship antivirus seperately because of constant updates... Wait a second, isn't Windows supposed to have constant updates in the first place? What a load of crap. Maybe you should start selling your updates at stores under this logic Bill. Blah.
... company's mission of ...
Infuriate left and right
I'm thinking this is some lame attempt to pump up the stock.
Bill Gates puts the psycho Ballmer in charge. Ballmer would be great if his only job was to crush little, cash-strapped companies run by twitchy VCs.
But when MSFT has to compete with a real company, that has real money, and can hurt them, the psycho stuff doesn't work -- chair throwing. It makes them look bad in the press, like they are desperate.
In earlier times, Ballmer could throw the chair, say "fuck" and "pussy" all he wanted, and nobody would really talk about it, because they'd be thinking --- jeez, if I blab about this, who knows if it will bite me in the ass.
Now that the emperor has no clothes, that shit doesn't work.
So then they have to trot out the Nice Bill to give interviews that dispute the "we are evil" tag, and try to make things look like it will all be OK.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Please take a look at this!
In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. [...]
So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.
be lawful evil.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
My guess is that the corporate concept of "Do No Evil" is what's keeping Dr. Bill singing the praises of his Mac-borrowed Office.
There's a reason why it's gun-metal grey.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Go here:
http://malfeasance.50megs.com/
So true. Don't know what's up with slashdot. I love the news that it offers us nerds, but its biased anti-ms opinions kinda annoy me.
It's too much work, even with better tools, I've got things I'd rather be doing. While I may not trust Google to do it the way I'd like, what they end up with will be more than I have interest in doing by myself...
And just what does Gates mean by "tools to organize"-- I doubt he means web-spider programs that will generate your own search engine database-- would it not likely mean that the tools would access a Microsoft database (that they apparently, haven't even bothered to organize) and you could then organize your links into Microsoft's data? Yeah, that sounds better than what Google's doing :-)...
My favorite quote: Q: [...] Do you feel you're in competition with Google, Yahoo and other Web properties for developers' attention? Gates: No, I don't think so [...] Yah, right.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Here is the best question for Mr. Gates. " Would you and the rest of Microsoft management consider defying the Chinese government on matters of censorship? Your competitor, Yahoo!, recently assisted Beijing in falsely arresting and imprisoning a reporter for 10 years. Would you consider taking the high road and follow in the footsteps of great American companies that defied the South African government's campaign of apartheid? "
I believe Google will stumble big time in the near future as it spreads itself out into too many businesses. It is really pure hubris on Google's part to think that it can handle the creation of a new Internet backbone *and* a consumer OS among all the other things it is trying to do.
Perhaps their biggest mistake was pissing Microsoft off so much with the Kai Fu Lee deal. In trying to overachieve on too many goals, the last thing they need is Redmond as an enemy. The last thing they need is Ballmer and Gates fighting them every inch of the way.
The amount of clout, IP, and coding prowess that MS wields should not be trivialized. The way to kill MS is to silently make them irrelevant and avoiding a war. Google just blew that strategy.
And the kicker is that billg's graciousness in the interview towards google actually tells me that MS has already won even before the coming battle starts.
But I don't think that someone who completely gives up license fees is ever going to have a substantial R&D budget and do the hard things, the things too hard to do in a university environment.
Bill's ability to completely and utterly ignore any portion of reality which doesn't promote The Microsoft Way(TM) is truly extraordinary. From the way he talks I've come to think he actually believes the shit that spews forth from his pie-hole, in a very Howard Hughes-ian sort of way.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162231&cid=135 60167
At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something. Novell was the best at file servers. Lotus was the best at spreadsheets. WordPerfect was the best at word processing.
So its not just me. Even the Founder knows they suck (comparatively)
Right now, because of the breadth of what we do, we have that in many areas. Nokia is way ahead of us in phones; we're closing the gap. Sony is ahead of us in video games. We're just on the verge of something (the Xbox 360) that will help us close the gap there. In Web search, Google is the far-away leader. Big honeymoon for them. Even if they do "me, too" type stuff, people think, "wow." nd Apple in music has done a fantastic job.
We interupt this Bill Gates Honesty Break to bring you the following.
In those areas where somebody else has done well, that's great. We'll match what they do, we'll bring new things to it, do it better and integrate it in with other things. And so it's very healthy for the consumer. We see that in search, we see it in music. It's not new at all that that's out there
Translation: We make inferior products, bundle them, make exclusive deals, failing all else we buy the competitor and bury/integrate their product.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Ok, he's right there ... if this quote was from like 1962. Before there was teh webbs, before there was teh netz, before there was teh Microsoft, before there was teh UNIX, there was an operating system that was designed from the ground-up to incorporate advanced/enhanced security features (relative to the times), and it was called Multics.
Unix has been established as a legitimate operating system since the 1970's. I guess you could say the "C" version would be the birthday of modern Unix, so we're talking 1973. Was Bill Gates out of grammar school yet at this point?
Native TCP/IP support was built into the kernel in the early 1980's, a few years. http://www.computerhope.com/unix/xenix.htm">Micros oft itself created a Unix port, and it probably doesn't surprise any of us that SCO ended up with it. The similarities between how SCO and MS behave in the industry and market aren't totally coincidence.
So, Bill, you HAD a network-ready and relatively secure operating system 25 goddam years ago. And you're saying that it's just now that anybody cares about networking, communications, or information security? Security has been a concern since the fucking 1960's, and your own friggen company had a Unix build.
Jesus H. I normally don't jump on the bash-Microsoft bandwagon and often grapple with some of YOU Slashdot turds for doing so, but if this isn't a bunch of merry sunshine blown up the collective asses of industry journalism, I don't know what is.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
too many new millionaires that don't work for him taking up the really good suites at the tech shows.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Google's motto is Do no evil.
And since Microsoft only does evil, I can see why Bill Gates disagrees with it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
That's *GOOD* UI design! Best I've seen yet!
That'll show Apple! Microsoft is the only company who truly knows how to use gradients and glass effects! Look at how impressive each element is on it's own!
People don't know how to use computers, so the beast way to get them going is to help them focus on each item on its own. That's where the menu bar comes in. Who wants to worry about the last few decades of computer interface design?!
Let's slicken it up for crissakes!
Clearly no one decided to read the intelligent parent posts before posting...so I might as well state the obvious...
Google's slogan is not "Don't be evil", that would be silly and have negative marketing connotations - their corporate slogan is "Organizing the world's information" - their corportate philosophy is "Don't be evil"
Never be a bigger fan of OSS and the GPL than me, but seriously, the only FUD I hear about nowadays is coming from Slashdot.
Q: Are there any features of Windows Vista that the U.S. antitrust settlement is keeping you from including, that you would otherwise want to include?
Gates: We're not being prevented from including features, and that's the strength of the settlement that we reached with the Justice Department and others.
actually, I would argue that that is the WEAKNESS of the settlement that was reached with the Justice Department.
Gates: Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together.
While it is true that Windows was originally built to run on machines not expected to be on networks. But that does NOT mean that all software, or even "software in general" was built with the same expectations.
"At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something," Gates said
:)
And still are, I'd wager, even the defunct ones...
Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not.
Solaris, 'Network is the computer', most other *nix's, Linux...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
From TFA:
"'At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something,' Gates said in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, underscoring the fact that it wouldn't be unprecedented to come from behind now."
If Microsoft's competitors are better at doing things than they are, then does M$ prevail?????
I got nothin'
Bill should take his ravishing (ahem) wife and go off and do good deeds...
Google image of Melinda Gates
Damn you for even making me curious!
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Bitter.
It's not anti-ms, it's pro-apple, anti-ms is just a byproduct of its pro-apple-ness.
Once the apple fans throw down their shield of zelotry, they'll see that this company they're supporting is just as litigious, dirty, capitalistic, monopolistic and non-caring as m$.
I'm not anti-anything, I'm just pro-information *wants* to be free. Not in the sense that it has an urge to be, but that information will inevitably get discovered and things like software patents shouldn't exist for information/code algorithms/gentics etc.
Given the way the "editor" posted the summary, I can certainly see how the punking would have occured. Of course my first thought was the same thing, and being sure that it couldn't be so (Bill's clumsy sometimes, but not insane), a little homework was called for.
It's very un-slashdot of you, though, to acknowledge the lept-to conclusion. What were you thinking, man? You'll have no street cred!
Sorry if I was snarky.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was capability and our software did not. As we use the Internet to connect everyone up, then the need to essentially have suspicion and only listen to certain other systems, and if flaws come up to have those updated very quickly, that became a new requirement."
... nah.
Yeah, I for one remember writing multi-user software at SFU back in the early 1980s. Maybe BillG is right and my entire existence will vanish in a puff of illogic
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I'm a microsoft employee that is thankful for the pragmatically positive effect that competitors have had on us.
When i started at MS, we were getting our lunch eaten in security/reliability issues compared to linux.. (which frnakly sucks at security and reliabilty compared to some other UNIX variants) We had customers tell us "you get your sh@#$ straight or we're jumping ship". They had heard, experienced, or both, that they could get better uptime and fewer successful attacks from other platforms.
That's what we needed - the execs heard that we had a competitive threat, so there was executive support to let the really brilliant guys push through huge expensive work on reliability, correctness, security, maintainability, etc. In the past, enough customers were willing to pay for something like Win95 that we only had to make something as good as Win95 (which i never used, btw, as i had given up PC's for Solaris/SPARC by that time..)
Today, nothing can leave Microsoft without the "security gurus" giving their stamp of approval. (i.e. the guys like Michael Howard). There's a formalized process, a list of stuff to check for, all threat models are reveiwed, we have a bunch of internal tools that look for known-uglies in code bases..
None of this existed 5 years ago and today it's mandatory for all shipping products.
Obviously there's more work to do on security and reliability, but today we have the corporate willpower to dump a lot of investment at these problems, and the results are encouraging - Server 2003 has very few issued critical udpates compared to past MS products, and even compared to some distributinos of linux.
The other thing we're finding is that for lots of things, F/OSS people can clone our stuff (UI, feature set) in less time than we can design, write, test, and ship it. Outlook's 11th version is what's out in the market place right now, but something like Evolution (which let's be honest, is about as blatant an outlook clone as you can make without the underlying technologies _also_ being Microsoft stuff) is only a few years old and is functional for a good number of scenarios.
Freeware clones/reimplementations benefit from the UI, the feature set, the "flow", the architecture, and most importantly, the MISTAKES that we've made, so that F/OSS teams can deliver a reasonably functional app that works reasonably well in a very short amount of time.
We definitely know about Eclipse and what it does. People on the inside ask "why would i use VS instead of Eclipse?" and its up to us to make sure there's a good answer.
So yes, i think most microsoft employees understand and even appreciate that competition makes us work better, and that alot of that competition today is Apple, F/OSS, and Google.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
"Don't be evil" is one of 10 statements of their philosophy. I can't find anywhere that Google itself states that it is their slogan. But I guess you can have a lot of slogans.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
he's spreading the message he wants others to believe
Bill's mom: Billy, Mrs. Jobs is on the phone. She said you took Steve's reality-distorting field, and he wants it back right now!
then patent it and sue the heck out of them so that they will be crushed utterly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This was blocked from the West Coast Feed.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
From TFA:
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not."
Umm...Linux??? Unix??? I'm not sure what software Mr. Gates is getting at.
I got nothin'
Don't look people. That link is worse than tubgirl. Luckily, I read the link target instead of clicking it. Still... scary.
nt
"In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. "
No it wasn't the "do no evil" slogan. I'm guessing most of the post in this thread will be made on this comment the submitter had made, who should pull his head out of his ass and stop tryin to flamebait.
TruePunk | Games
We come because Slashdot has a bias.
No chairs flying, no bad language or insults, no monkeydancing - is that an interview with a Microsoft executive?
However, I like the quote
Our [MSN] search API is way better than their [Google's] search API.
Sure, just as Ballmer mentioned, Google is gonna fucking die.
The pace of software innovation today is as fast as it has ever been.
I won't comment on that. The more patents issued, the more innovation.
the error rates have come down, down, down, down
Developers, developers, developers are working hard on that.
There will be some shock among users. But pretty quickly (people get used to it).
What does he mean by THAT? That shocking customers is OK because they are already used to it?
Some just keep patching holes.
The smart ones know when to bail."
Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that
The way I was reading this was...
"We do know their slogan (Do no evil) - And we don't believe in that"
Of course, before reading the article, but I think that Microsoft's business practices shows that they do not belive in not doing evil?
Oh... wait... it's a slogan... from Microsoft.
1. Monopoly2. Slogan
3. Profit???
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
"Follow the market"
That's it. As a business philosophy it's brilliant, it's gotten them where they are today. As a product or innovation philosophy it turns out DOS, Windows, Office etc, a bunch of unbalanced, insecure, kludgy, unmanagable systems and applications.
Deleted
That's kind of like lying, isn't it?
This means that Microsoft is actually good, because the new slogan for Google is "Don't be evil, unless it's necessary for the greater good."
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know they aren't using Windows and we disagree with that.
http://virtualearth.msn.com/
it looks just like another version of Google earth?
...how can we capitalize on what *could* be a nice bit of PR disaster for M$, showing that Gates is off his rocker, not to be trusted around children, etc. It's simply wrong that he should think M$ came up with everything and let it stand at that; think of the readers who *don't* know better and are that bit more lulled into thinking computers were invented by M$.
It's sort of a bizzare reversal of the phrase: every time Bill lies, a cash register goes "ring!"
From the interviews, one gets the impression that Gates things microsoft has to own the world. Instead of just doing a few things or even many things well, he seems to think microsoft has to dominate everything.
Any time some new technology or service emerges, he becomes obsessed with completely dominating it.
How many simultaneous directions can microsoft go before they completely lose focus and become spread too thin?
where's the poll for hair length?
That would be interesting, unless all choices are within a very narrow range.
Bitter, perhaps, but also dead-on accurate.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something. Novell was the best at file servers. Lotus was the best at spreadsheets. WordPerfect was the best at word processing.
"But we fixed that. We didn't get any better, we just used dirty tricks to kill our competitors (cf. Ballmer's statement). Now, we are the best by default, because we are the only ones left in the market."
If the Slashdot editors had done some checking, they would have discovered Microsoft has been after the Evil market for some time.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
But the Microsoft chairman on Tuesday said his company remains the overall industry leader, and he compared the current rivalries to legendary ones with Lotus, Novell and WordPerfect -- situations in which the Redmond company ultimately overcame steep odds to prevail.
;-)).
Situations in where Microsoft was allowed to do whatever the hell they pleased (secret API calls, exclusionary contracts, aggressive hiring, etc) to stomp these other companies out of existence. This is not the case today. If they do some of the incredibly underhanded and (what are now considered) illegal things, they'll end up back in court with preliminary injunctions thrown at them so fast they won't know what hit them.
On top of all that, you have users who are becoming more and more unhappy with Microsoft's software. I see it more and more every day - users who will shun MSN Messenger for Yahoo! Messenger, Outlook Express for GMail, Open Office for MS Office, and even Windows for Mac OS X (I did, you should too
You better believe it's a different world, Bill, or you're going to have a rude awakening.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
This is one of the standard FUD lines from MS's PR machine lately. He is just trying to convince the 'masses' that the reason their security sucks ass is that Windows was largely developed "in more innocent times", or whatever, and "therefore Microsoft is innocent of negligence and everyone else has bad security too". Utter bollocks, of course. But the public don't know about nearly four decades of UNIX, TCP/IP etc., so now they'll really believe that Microsoft pioneered the whole "Internet security" thing in the early 2000s.
From TFA: "But the Microsoft chairman on Tuesday said his company remains the overall industry leader, and he compared the current rivalries to legendary ones with Lotus, Novell and WordPerfect -- situations in which the Redmond company ultimately overcame steep odds to prevail."
Microsoft had a decisive advantage over Lotus, WordPerfect, Novell and IBM (OS/2) which was the monopoly power controlling the OEM (PC manufactures) and the "suite" killer app (MS Office). The same advantage (including unlimited cash) applied against Netscape.
But when you look at where Microsoft competed without a monopoly advantage or dominant market share their track record is poor. They still can out spend many (Sony for games) but Google has several key advantages, huge market capitalization (translates to abundant cash) and market leadership where the MS monopoly (and cash) may not be an advantage for Microsoft.
It is possible that its a whole new market place that Bill Gates has very little successful track record to use to compete with. Google (and in some ways Apple too) are ahead of Microsoft, delivering amazing products before Microsoft is in the market. Despite Microsoft's history of slowly wearing down the competition by experimenting with well funded solutions (V3 seems was often the transition point), Microsoft may be in for a humbling market experience.
Between Google, Linux and Apple (as a leading alternative to the MS desktop), I'd bet against Microsoft's previous golden touch.
This could be the shift that helps level the playing field. The consumer and the market benefits. No monopoly historically has prevailed forever, it is doubtful Microsoft will be the exception.
... married the boss. Ain't no ignorant slut there!
From what, the mid/late eighties?
Ahh Bill you are so right, after all no computers were ever networked before 1998.
Don't love these journalists who are even more clueless than Mr Gates?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Screen cap.
Definitely one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. At least Bill seems to have a sense of humor.
Bill Gates:
So Google is not offering development capabilities yet.
Is he missing something?
meh
Gates: Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not.
The level of balls it takes to tell this big a lie when you know better (and he does know better... Microsoft Xenix was multiuser and networked and was set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together) is astonishing.
His tongue should have burned to ashes in his mouth before it let him say such a thing. He should have been struck by lightning, the plague, and embarassing warts before he got to those lying words. With shingles and boils he should have been afflicted. How can there be any justice in the world when a man can make a claim like that and it passes unchallenged?
Q: Some people hold Microsoft most accountable for security problems, even though software flaws are exploited by "bad guys," as you said. Is that a fair criticism?
Gates: Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together. So it's not like there was some software that had this security capability and our software did not. As we use the Internet to connect everyone up, then the need to essentially have suspicion and only listen to certain other systems, and if flaws come up to have those updated very quickly, that became a new requirement.
Because Microsoft is the biggest software company and so successful, we should be held responsible for coming up with those things. We've got to push the state of the art, we've got to be the one to solve those problems.
Microsoft has got to be the one to solve those problems?? Oh Please... Any excuse to take control and give themselves some unfair advantage over their competition. Makes me want to gag.
Let me guess. Microsoft solution: Trusted Computing.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
He must be thinking of Internet Explorer.
The Microsoft supported DVD+R spec did not trump the Apple backed DVD-R format and now combo drives are the norm.
It is the other way around - Apple only supports DVD+R/RW.
I like to think of F/OSS developers as comissioned artists. Creating a work of art for a specific individual (or organization) but on display to the world. You may be able to make a copy of the artwork, but creating it to begin with takes an artist's vision.
The more types of code "on display" as it were the more shared inspiration other artists have to draw upon the better the art as a whole develops.
Perhaps a flawed analogy but it seems the most apt to me.
... except Gate's point is still valid. They aren't getting paid to code, they have to support themselves to code. He believes in selling a product instead of selling support. It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
-everphilski-
is microsoft going to give google the tools to organize the world's information?
At Microsoft, we work to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. This is our mission. Everything we do reflects this mission and the values that make it possible.
What the hell? If that is the case then why not make it so we can use source if needed, and copy os installs and information freely without fine, liability, threat of suit or going to jail by licensing their products to be have freedom (as in GPL freedom) and try makeing money from services and not from licensing.
If life is hellish for Microsoft-watchers out here, imagine what it must be like In There, even for the ones not dodging chairs. You not only need to hang on every word from the Chairman and various Gangs of Four, you also have to worry about what Google, AOL, Apple, IBM, and even Adobe and Nokia might do next.
Life's too short to spend watching corporations and their sociopathic officers.
I can understand why Bill Gates disagrees so vehemently with the "Don't be evil" Google slogan.
He is afraid that it's a refence to Microsoft and who knows what happens if George Bush finds this out. After the New Orleans fiasco the president may just send in the troops against local evil forces.
It's much cheaper than sending the troops abroad and can earn leadership brownie points at the polls for a the free falling president.
Bill Gates has all the reasons to be afraid of being the resident evil in these turbulent times, when the oil prices are so high.
Oh, hold on, Windows had networking since 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) and before that, Novell and others provided networking even on the DOS platform.
And what about the VMS (DEC) and VMS (IBM) and Unix (various/ATT) systems - all of which were "networked" from basically day one (well, maybe not the first versions of Unix, but my the mid/late 1970s Unix was too)
So, who was not connected/networked when? 3.11 is over 15 years old. Hell, Win95 is over 10 years old now and it had lots of networking as standard features.
Given that Win95 and WinNT are the first Win32 platforms and WinNT was specifically designed for networking (to kill the NetWare market), it would be safe to say that the Win32 API platform has *always* had networking as part of its core feature set - thus, well, it really should not be a new thing for any 32-bit Windows application.
Looks like he is simply jealous of the new couple on honeymoon. All it's babies are being delivered without a c-section. Maybe Bill & Steve will announce a new marriage in CA as it's now legal for them to wed and try out a honeymoon.
Way more interesting than the interview. "Thank God for Apple and Open Source (tm) for making Microsoft a competitor!" "They're making a superior product because they can't buy the competition!!!" Microsoft will always be the most popular topic on Slashdot, and that says alot.
I used to search at AltaVista. Then a friend said "try Google, it seems to find things better". So I tried it, and it did.
Google didn't wind up in front because of clever marketing alone. Their search engine whomps the daylights out of all the other ones, IMHO. That *and* clever marketing put them out front.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I hope the /. editors checked, re-checked, then checked again to make sure that that is Gates' quote on CNET, b/c otherwise, a quote like that is a libel suit waiting to happen...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Didn't Mr and Mrs Gates Snr ever teach their son not to tell lies? Seems to me this rather fundamental bit of parenting is missing from large swathes of our supposedly great and good these days. Bush is another one. Just tell a lie with enough confidence and conviction and repetition and people will HAVE to believe it. Seems to me that's the way it's all going. Maybe these people don't even know they're telling great big fat whopping porkies, but in that case that points to a whole series of additional failings.
The poster said 'problems' and not 'security problems'. M$ software suffers from all kinds. It is true that early UNIX systems were less secure than today's. Those issues have been and continue to be rectified as discovered, leaving us with systems that can be secured to a very high degree. One might remember that UNIX' heritage can be traced back to Multics - a system designed with high security in mind. Windoze was designed with 'getting rich quick' in mind. There is no excuse for the shoddiness of what M$ ships today and only ignorance can explain why the general public and business customers continue to tolerate it.
you had me at #!
Whatever may be MS shortcomings , the man does seem to have vision, and his experience with dealing with ups and downs of the industry shows ..
Gates talking about speech becoming more effective than the keyboard, seriously wld anyone consider that important today ? but to invest money in such research its just possible everyone will be still playing catchup to MS in 10 years Sundru
Ballmer's Slogan:
....
"Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."
Google's Slogan:
Do no evil
Bush's Slogan:
Do nothing well
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that."
Way to fuck up, slashdot.
Way to fuck the meaning of everything up.
And you... YOU have the gall to accuse Gates of bending facts.
Hypocrites.
From TFA:
Everybody has got a PC.
Rats! I don't. I never have had one. Why am I always left out?
qz
Did some dyslexic gen-eng whiz kid splice Bush and Gates together? Do we finally have a reason to have BushGate(s)?
Aside from Iraq, oil prices, Katrina victims, and a host of things we probably never heard about.Last time I tried that, the body cooled down pretty quickly.
Nice to see people aren't buying this crap.
We here aren't, but Joe Taxpayer is going to continue to think this new version of Windows isn't going to have all the problems XP had. Or, knowing some of my customers, it will work great on their P3 700. It said it would work on the box!
Let's take a look a Gates on MS' marketing:
"Ever since I put out the big security memo talking about that as our top priority, we've been gaining a lot of respect for how seriously we're taking it, and the steps we've taken. People have seen visible progress in terms of the ease of securing their systems, some reduction in the spam that's out there."
We spent $MONEY on marketing and it worked!
"...the need to educate customers how they set their systems up in the right way."
For $100 per copy of Windows, could it maybe come with a manual or some sort? At least 50 pages of useful info for Joe Taxpayer.
"But in terms of making it something that doesn't really hold the industry back and Microsoft is viewed as a leader in terms of our investments, and our predictability and showing the framework for how we're doing this, we have made immense progress."
$MONEY on marketing makes people think they're more secure, when it's partly because XP is now a mature platform.
"Software in general, whether it was from Microsoft or somebody else, was not set up for an environment where all the computers were connected together."
This quote has been pounded on alot, but did they have that in mind when NT was drawn up?
Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that. So, yah. This is my first post. And I have a sig. I like it. Hmmm, I don't think I want Bill Gates' name in my sig, actually. I think I'll probably change it in about a week. Hmmm, maybe I should of read the article.
"Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that." -- Bill Gates
Google's Company Overview says "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Their list of Ten ten things Google has found to be true includes as point 5: "You can make money without doing evil."
But iTunes markets itself as a music player. Check their site--iTunes calls itself "the best digital jukebox and #1 music download store". People do not download iTunes because they want to rearrange their music folder--they download it because they want to listen to their music, and perhaps buy a few tracks online.
Apparently the grandparent poster couldn't find and uncheck the "Organize my music" checkbox.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
We're not being prevented from including features, and that's the strength of the settlement that we reached with the Justice Department and others. There's quite a bit of process we go through to make sure that the way we're putting them in and exposing them to third parties, that we're meeting all the requirements of that. But it's not preventing us from being very, very innovative and making it as -----rich----- as we want to. Beautiful choice of words. I couldn't have said it better myself.
"Potpourii doesn't taste as good as it smells." - Dark_Link2135
>Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information.
And by that he means several remote exploits so everyone can write their own "crawler" to index the world's information
Billgatus of Borg:
In google's own words:
(my emphasis added)
Note how Billgatus of Borg conveniently omits the part about making it universally accessible, as if to avoid an embarrassing contrast between Google's track record and the constant roadblocks his own company puts up.
While Google was building its business with open standards and on the same level playing field that other search engines could use, MSFT was exploiting the closed nature of its Word format against its competitors. While Google was busy adding support for a wide variety of browsers, MSFT was breaking HTML standards in the hopes that only IE would remain standing. He had to leave that little detail out, otherwise it would dredge up memories of how MSFT became a convicted monopolist, and that would clash with the sparkling Mr. Clean image he was trying to project.
And useful? I certainly find it more useful if searches return what I'm searching for instead of just ads. If MSFT manages to kill Google, I would expect search results to degenerate back to the highest bidder model of ads mixed into the search results. Google has done a much better job of managing their PR with this, steering clear of hotmail-like flashing ads and pagerank gambits and maintaining some semblance of believability. And, they've done it without pulling their hair (or toupees) out, or throwing chairs or lodging the sort of epithets one would expect from a knuckle-dragging world wrestling federation circus act. It's a contrast that had to be swept under the carpet.
So, how does The Collective answer to Google's mission statement? (voice=polyphonic Borg collective + squeaky Billgatus)
(and I would sardonically add) ...in a EULA-bound fashion, so that we can revise the agreement at any time to, in effect, appropriate the intellectual property rights to ourselves, without
having to spend a cent storing it. It shall all be
assimilated. Eventually people will have to buy our systems just to
access that information and Google will find itself locked out by our
DRM. Resistance is futile. (/sardonicity)
Also, what's this talk about "giving" tools to people? My, how generous that sounds. Does he mean like another toolbar? Gee, thanks. Or perhaps he means a tool in the sense of a talking paperclip? Or maybe a 3-D flipping crowbar to open up those DRM files long enough to read their EULAs? Or how about a free spyware remover that doesn't remove the #1 brand of spyware, which has a EULA claiming it is illegal to try to remove it. Hmmm. Everyone bow to the unbounded generosity?
One thing's for sure, Google's API has gotten onto his radar, so I'm guessing they may also try to beam down another shipment of EULA-laden developer tools in the hopes they can cut Google off at the mindshare pass. They are trying to kill Google, but for the moment it looks like they will have to brainwa^Wtrain a lot more nine-year-olds. Anyone who knew what was going on a scant few years ago and strains long enough to remember it would have to conclude that this is just another whitewash.
and he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and you give up your monopoly on fisheries.
More (or less) informative is the podcast/transcript of an interview that BG gave at PDC-2005 to Jon Udell over here. Lots of technical talk - role of XML, etc.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
One problem for some of "us" is that we want to be quantitative about things. When someone says to us "you suck, linux is more secure", we demand to know how "more secure" is measured. This puts people in the counting vulnerabilities or security bulletins game. That naive method has flaws, so then we get into issues of "how _severe_ was a vulnerability" and the thing eventually gets reasonably subjective.
:)
.. but if the administrator insists on opening up that port, lets have the binary compiled with /GS to block stack-based overruns.. but if the user is running their own service that is NOT compiled with /GS, lets have DEP/NX turned on so we get system-wide overrun detection..and so on..
In any case, I am not prepared to give you specifics (i am doing this off the top of my head), but the surprising (to many) and positive (for us) news is that for some definition of "critial" and for some distribution(s) of linux, we've got less critial vulnerabilitiy bulletins in Server 2003 than those linux distributions. As far as i know, that's not because we have vulnerabilities we know about and just aren't issuing bulletins, so please brush that conspiracy theory aside
Turning off code at the factory and then declaring issues less severe because the code was shipped out disabled is unrealistic in the real world.
I disagree. Secure by default is not something we decided to invent to see how it played out - OpenBSD ships a lot of things in the box - but all turned off, and they are turned on by the administrator as needed. I find it hard to argue with OpenBSD's track record on pragmatic security, don't you? Furthermore, if you look at the history of things that have just killed us security wise, it has often been the case of stuff turned on that nobody needed or didn't even know they were running. In the W2k/IIS5 timeframe we were killed by IP-Printing, index server, etc.. features of IIS that NOBODY used but everybody ran. In XP we had problems with the UPNP thing (when there were really no UPNP devices). When Slammer hit we scrambled because MSDE was out there in all kinds of places and nobody knew exactly where all you could expect to see it.. both with our products (shameful, but we've taken steps to address this internally) and with 3rd party software that redistributed MSDE..
At least with Microsoft, it has long been the case that we ship with too much crap turned on and that makes our attack surface larger than it needs to be. Turning off what we can seems like a valid thing to do. Even if the admin turns on 90% of what we shut off, their attack surface is still only 90% of what it would ahve been had we not done anything.
The Server Roles feature i think is pretty good - it lets us ship with lots of stuff turned off, but makes it trivial to turn on the stuff you need. I haven't done any kind of analysis on how much you open yourself back up by using the roles wizard (i.e. could a guru do a better job manually?) but i suspect its pretty close to optimal.
Shipping stuff turned off is just one aspect of a defense in depth strategy. The safest code is code that doesn't run. But if the code is going to run, lets have things firewalled off by default
Just as an aside - what services are you aware of that need to be running to run IE ? I can't think of any that you'd leave turned off except for needing to run IE. Also, IE for Server 2003 ships in "lockdown" mode which is pretty draconian w.r.t. what it can do. Finally, if you dont want to use IE at all, i think this is possible, since there are a variety of ways to get complete patches with no outside network access required (i.e. SUS, or just building a patch CD on a less vital host, and using sneaker net to get it to the production locked down boxes...)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I don't think there's a built-in spell checker for the "Comment" box on slashdot, even when you use Firefox (as i am using currently for slashdot) :)
:)
:) If you haven't used linux enough to come across both security and reliability problems - that other UNIX's dont have.. you haven't done enough with linux, and/or you don't know enough about other unix variants. I'm not trying to suggest that linux is without merit, or that it's the worst thing ever.. its simply not the pinnacle of human acheivement.. or freeware operating systems :)
In any case, i'll put aside my disgust at being accused of being a PR/Marketing "person" and try and explain what i was saying a bit better
"pragmatically positive effect"
Ok, so this sounds kind of silly, but basically it would be awkward to say "our competitors kicking our butt is having a positive effect on us" I shoved pragmatic in there to suggest that even thought it seems counterintuitive, as a practical/pragmatic issue, our competitors are making us better, even while they're taking market/mindshare from us at times.
"corporate willpower"
Guilty as charged. The point here being that you need some large percentage of "important" people at the company to really get something that sweeps across every aspect of the company going.. we got that with security. We dont have that yet with running as non-admin (that i can tell)
"threat models"
This is primarily the reason i am responding to an A/C that is mostly trying to belittle me. If you're not using threat models, i can only hope its because you don't know what they are or how they help you. If you know how threat modelling works and why/how to use it, but have decided not to, i'd be curious to know why. Threat modelling and its output - the threat model documents, are pretty important in modern, hostile-world facing software development. If you do a google search on "threat modelling", (as of right now), the first link you get back is an MSDN article explaining what it is, etc. If you have anything to do with software development or procurement, (i.e. you make software or you choose what software to buy) its probably worth your time to understand what threat modelling is.
Finally - my jab against linux. I've had to make my living off of linux before. I'm not making pot shots from some ivory tower here
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Does it mean getting all the windows platforms starting from Windows 95 or before to work seamlessly with Vista? Or does it mean wiping anything that is not marked with Windows TM off the earth? Or does it mean CRAP?
Right. Because everybody would just assume Bill Gates actually would claim to be evil in an interview.
/. editor who makes the mistake of assuming his audience is capable of independent thought.
It is the obvious interpretation, and it is also obviously the wrong interpretation, a contradiction designed to raise the curiosity of an intelligent audience.
PS: The first paragraph was sarcasm. I usually don't state that, but you are obvioulsy unable to recognize humor. At least any humor that require your IQ to be larger than your shoe size.
PPS: And yes, that was a flame. Feel free to moderate accordingly. I'm tired of morons getting moderated as insightful, whenever they flame an
Back in 1995 when MS was a seemingly unstoppable force in computing, who would have imagined that they'd become such an unfocused mess sitting around perpetually talking about doing great things while other companies (Apple, Google, etc.) are actually doing them and leaving MS in the dust.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Google got big because when everyone was trying to be everything (yahoo), they were doing one thing better. After that they didn't stop doing each project better.
But my continued use of google boils down to the fact that their page loads faster and then gives decent results. They'll be evil, just a matter of time. If they keep the page render time low, they will be succesful.
Clear?
be relied upon for any information relating to the English language.
HAND.
It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
I call Bullshit. It's like saying "Working for commercial software companies is like prositution. Still, prostitution and sex are 2 different ideologies and both can co-exist." You see how stupid this is?
Open source programmers and implementers are paid to customise OSS projects to suit client requirements. Much like MCSEs are required to install and configure MS Exchange and SQL servers.
Just because the CD says Exchange server, it doesn't mean it will install itself and configure itself the way I intend it to. And again just naming the product Office 97 or Office 2003 does not translate to better features and usability that the buyer expects.
The cost of licensing and implementing a full-featured MS server for a single service - like mail - is already greater than paying an Open Source programmer to implement Open Groupware with LDAP support. In the former approach, MS makes about $85 and the implementer gets about $15. With open source, it's $0 for the license and $100 for services.
Naturally, people who can configure Open Source products for customer's real needs are better paid than $5 per hour MCSEs. This is the exact opposite of what Gates seems to imply. OSS coders aren't cutting hair in the morning, they're chopping the balls off "closed-source lock-in software vendors". No wonder companies like Microsoft are worried.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Larry Paige Vs Sergey Brin = Larry Paige
Gates Vs Ballmer = Gates
Gates Vs Larry Paige = Gates
Hmmmm...
8. Occam's fucking razor.
From the interview: "At any point in our history, we've had competitors who were better at doing something," Did Gates just say their products suck or is it just me?
Based on what i wrote, i'd come to the conclusino that Microsoft listens more to its customers than its employees!
We do what we think will make customers buy our stuff. That includes listening when they complain. In the case of security, that means "stopping the train" and making that top priority.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
This is just more hot air from that malevolent, globe-trotting politician. Why does /. feel obliged to give him and his cause free advertising everytime he opens his yap?
Seeing as MSIE is on 100% of MS-Windows machines, all that really has to happen is that a "security" patch, service pack or upgrade sets the default home page for MSIE to MSN. Since few people mess with the default settings, such a maneuver would drop Google off of most people's radars.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.